


pull me out from inside.

by diaghileafs



Category: The Hour
Genre: Comfort, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-02
Updated: 2013-11-02
Packaged: 2017-12-31 07:42:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1029074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/diaghileafs/pseuds/diaghileafs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>August 1937. It’s like coming back to a novel he’s reread tens of times and finding out new things the longer he dwells on the page.</p>
            </blockquote>





	pull me out from inside.

In the height of summer, Barcelona lies duskily in the wake of a new day and Randall gets back to base at gone midnight, having taken advantage of this. His feet bleed and blister against the hard soles of his shoes from being on the ground since dawn and his throat has been shouted raw but he’s still buzzing from the rally, so nothing really hurts at all. The offices are silent, empty without the usual pulse of typewriter keys and heated conversation, though the stench of whiskey laced sweat still sticks to the nape of his neck like humid rain as he lets himself in, slamming the door with a satisfying thud behind him and removing his blazer in one practised movement. Light bulbs hum and flicker into half-life, the fact they have electricity comes as quite a surprise and he crosses off his name in the rota, uncurling the edges of the exercise book mindlessly. He freezes when his eyes scan the page, noticing with a sinking heart that _Storm, A._ has been scribbled off in angry black ink for the foreseeable future, and when he runs his finger over it, the ink clings to it like a curse. Her name has haunted his every waking moment since the whole team went out to celebrate the birthday of a colleague whose name does not immediately come to mind and they’d all woken with thick heads the next day; she’d dragged him onto the dance floor and he’d kissed her up against the door of her dormitory block in a moment of madness, which wasn’t really madness at all because everything had stop; the only things he’d been able to focus on were the way her legs wrapped around his waist and his hands tangled in her curls. It was the first quiet seconds he’s had since arriving and the ones he’s come to regret the most.

The thought of it sends cold water embarrassment trickling down his spine and he stalks the rooms for a bottle of whiskey, gin, _anything_ to ease his mind, shirt becoming increasingly hot. He takes it off and hangs it carefully on the hanger on the back of his door, sighing with relief and running a hand through his hair, static and tousled from the day’s events. A breeze catches him off guard and he turns to see if a window had been left open, despite the fact that he clearly remembers checking them all the previous evening, knowing that he wouldn’t be in. But when he approaches it, he sees her – sat on the windowsill with her dishevelled curls falling over her eyes and his coat draped over her shoulders. She looks so beautiful- silhouetted in dim light and glow of her cigarette- that he would have grabbed for his camera under different circumstances. But then he notices the irregularity of her breathing, the silence at his presence, and clears his throat instead.

She starts, head turning after a moment to meet his gaze, cheeks flushed and eyes tear-stung, “Mr Brown,” she wipes her face furiously, hands shaking so much he wants to reach forward and take them in his own, “I – I thought you were-” the words come out barely above a whisper, her chest heaving with them, “I didn’t think you’d be in.”

Randall balls his fists into his pockets to stop them from thrumming out a rhythm against the cotton of his thigh, “the rally caused more of a stir than expected,” he tries, somewhat desperately, cursing himself because he knows his father is turning in his grave at the way his son is skirting around the corners of the situation, “I wanted to get it down whilst it’s still fresh.”

“Right,” she taps her cigarette against the window frame, ash clinging the air, before hollowing her cheeks on it again, “POUM, was it?”

He nods, shifting to catch her profile better, mascara lines gleaming and skirt rustling with the wind, “are you alright, Miss Storm?”

Her fag burns between her fingers but she doesn’t flinch and lets it go into the night, “my brother,” she motions to the copy of _The Times_ angled at her feet, swallowing back a shudder unsuccessfully, “my brother died.”

“Oh, God,” he takes the paper, a step closer to her, “I’m so sorry,” it sounds empty because there’s so much more he means to say and the words stick in his sandpaper throat, he feels irrationally angry on her behalf, “did none of your family think to inform you?”

She shakes her head, “I don’t have any other family and when we moved on, I didn’t leave a forwarding address,” and laughs bitterly, swinging her legs over to make her heels clatter on the floor, “Henry and I weren’t on the best of terms, you see. Mama passed away and I came here, he didn’t approve.”

In his mind’s eye, he can just picture Lix in some big willowing country house, treading muds into Persian rugs and whipping up rumours by attending black tie dinners in slacks and making in appropriate conversation, “no, I can imagine,” he says carefully, “but all the same-” 

“I’m going back,” she interrupts him sharply, tone tittering on hysteria, “I have to sort out the Estate’s affairs – you’ll tell Barnaby, won’t you? Tell him I’ll be gone for a fortnight or so?”

“Of course, Miss Storm, anything I can do.”

She gets up, bridging the scared ground between them, watching him intently, the flats of her palms against his chest, “you’re a gentleman if there ever was one, Mr Brown,” he smells bourbon on her breath as she kisses him on the cheek, lips lingering.

And he shrugs it off, leaves to get her another bottle.

\---

Two hours and three quarters of the bottle later, the night has taken an expectantly cold turn but his coat lies discarded the arm of his chair; both of the sat on the floor, Lix curled with her head rested in his lap and him horribly sober, trying not to think about it. She told him all the stories of her childhood: the formidable Russian governess, her horses, and the garden parties her mother used to hold before they lost the majority of their fortune in the wake of The Belle Époque. She’d taken off his tie and played with it as she spoke, but now they don’t talk at all and a comfortable silence has settled in the room. A clock somewhere in the building chimes out three o’clock and tiredness weighs down his eyelids, he thinks about taking her home and putting her to bed. Then Lix mutters something and he has to dip his head down to hear her, faces, lips millimetres apart.

“Don’t you like me anymore?” she repeats more strongly this time, eyes squeezed shut so that the tears can’t escape from behind her lids. He doesn’t reply, and suddenly she’s blinking up at him accusingly, face pale on the contrast of his trousers, “do you regret the other night?”

A dull ache spreads to his loins and he bites back a sigh, feeling a flush on his neck, “I don’t know what you mean,” his voice comes out a lot deeper than he would have liked.

She tilts her head up a fraction, her throat arches, “you haven’t kissed me again,” flaked lipstick stretching into a sad, lopsided smirk, “I thought you would have,” and her fingers creep up to his jaw.

“Miss Storm,” he starts hopelessly, racking his brain for a reason, an excuse and not finding one.

“Randall, _please_ , I-”

 His mouth crushes against hers with fervour that her grasp tightens and his hand cradles the back of her head. It falls into place, as it had done that drunken evening; it’s like coming back to a novel he’s reread tens of times and finding out new things the longer he dwells on the page. She holds back just enough to be teasing and he sucks on her lip, drawing it into his mouth, grazing his teeth along it and then soothing it with his tongue until she gives in, moaning and withering before breaking the kiss to squirm onto his lap, straddling him and slipping her cold hands under his vest. “ _Lix_ ,” he takes her wrists gently, “I think we should-”

She begins to press kisses by his ear and smiles against his jaw, peeling off his undergarment and, before he can say anything, is folding it neatly on the floorboards beside them, “it’s alright, darling,” she breathes, coming to kiss him against, “don’t worry, I’ve got it.”

It makes his heart pound in his chest like a trapped bird, so hard he can hear it echoing in his ears. He trembles on the tiny buttons and accents each one with a kiss to her exposed flesh, letting her shrug it off somewhat impatiently to place it beside his vest. For a moment they still, listen to the harmony of their laboured breathing, he stares at her form above him in spite of himself, taking in every detail; the delicate curve of her breasts and the moles on the her ribcage which he trails his teeth across them finally, evoking a sound which makes something deep and primal sting within him, a sound he knows will be with him until the day he dies, and he’s kissing her again, manoeuvring her gingerly onto her back. They’re all grabbing and languid limps, their bodies will be covered with bruises and each other in a few hours and she swears at him as he travels down the map of her bones, so creatively it would make any sailor blush. She curses the skirt she’s been advised to wear because the Nationalists don’t care for _la mujer moderna_ and she draws enough attention as it is without them getting the wrong idea. She curses at the stockings which have stuck to the creaminess of her sticky thighs, at the precision at which he removes them and takes his time in lowering his head to tease kisses on the final stretch. His head swims with her scent and the illicit taste of her through her silk knickers, he savours his senses tingling with something other than alcohol and self-loathing, darkness and nicotine.

“Randall,” her gasps crackle on his name in the electricity enveloping them, a leg sliding up his back, a hand in his hair, “for God’s sake,” and she helps him wiggle her out of them, his laugh at her eagerness vibrating through her, a small scream escaping her.

And then it happens, as he always knew it would, his mind begins to wander to the open window and its shutters flapping in the breeze outside, to the tightness of his remaining clothes and what a spectacle he’s making of himself, having a woman naked on his office floor, a woman who’s far too perfect for him because he doesn’t deserve perfect things; he ruins them and breaks them. She says his name and shifts underneath to sit up. He looks up at her, growing colder by the second ( _useless, useless, useless man_ ), his face pink with frustration, “I’m sorry, it’s not you, I-”

 He’d expected her to slap him, gather up her things and leave but she doesn’t, though he tells himself it’s just because of the whiskey, she leans over and touches his face so lightly she’s almost _not_ touching him as though he’s something precious, “I know, darling,” if it were anyone else using that maternal tone with him, he would be insulted. Lix is different, of course, she is because he can tell from the look in her eyes and slack set of her jaw that she means it, that he’s alright, “it’s alright, anything you need.”

The remaining whiskey is finished and he makes love to her three times before they slink home in the wee hours of the milky morning to sleep in his single bed, which is to become their bed, hearts already swollen with love.


End file.
